On The Elite Democracy And Its Expansion Path In Rural Governance

Through reforming and opening up for more than30years, China has made a great process in economy and modernization level realizes a qualitative leap. However, the reform of the political system did not catch up with the pace of economic reform and economic development was no effective for promoting democratization process. To the transition period for China, the rapid economic development is not the primary objective, but the reform of the political system is imperative. One of the key factors of political reform is the building of democratic politics, which is top priority to achieve a smooth transition of the socialist modernization. Democracy can be divided into the national level of democracy and grass-roots community level democracy. Throughout Chinese history, China’s democratic traditions and democratic awareness is extremely weak, under such conditions, the building of grassroots democracy appear to be having more strategic importance. The villagers’ autonomy in the implementation of the rural democratic political construction belongs to the scope of grassroots democracy, and it’s also the starting point and a breakthrough of China’s construction of socialist democracy at this stage. However, due to the weak spirit of citizenship, civic awareness of Chinese citizens and the extreme worship of power, over the years the launching of villagers’ autonomy does not achieve the intended purpose, but makes the current village governance falling into all sorts of impasse, including the conflict of "due" and "reality" between township government and village, the conflict between adhering the leadership of the party and the "two committees" under the villagers’ autonomy, the frequent appearance of "bribery" phenomenon in villagers’direct election, and the masses trust is facing the danger of being deconstructed, all these have hindering the pace of building rural democratic politics.Many scholars’ studies prove that the development of the market economy led to the differentiation of the social structure, and the differentiation of interest at the same time. The ongoing game between the various stakeholders brings China into the era of the interests of the game, for various reasons, the interests of the game subject occupied resources and rights is not very balanced, that results in the game structures tend to powerful groups, and the emergence of a large number of elite in the interests of the game. Similarly, in the process of rural social transformation, the interests of the game situation also appear, and the resulting rural elites have also become the main force of rural governance. Elite governance has in fact become the main content of the current village governance model. In this case, taking the road of elite democracy seems to be an effective mode of transition in the implementation of building rural democratic politics, although elite democracy is not an inevitable direction of democratic and political construction.Just like the development of the market economy always lead to the commencement of the multiple interests of differentiation and diversified interests of the game, the democratic political construction process will also involve the interests of the game and also require a balanced state of the game. From those analyses about economics game theory, the rules of the game play a key role on impact to the outcome of the game, so changing the rules of the game will achieve the desired outcome of game. For rural governance, the modification of the rules of the game should be determined beneficial for the expansion of elite democracy, and ultimately benefit the construction of democratic politics. The purpose of this paper is to explore such a path, making the elite democracy could be expanded and the building of rural democracy be promoted effectively.This paper is divided into five parts, the first part includes the classification of existing research results, and determines the purpose of the study and research methods. The second part analyzes the cause of rural grass-roots democracy’s promoting, the process of developing rural self-government and dilemma. The third part analyzes the theoretical development of elite governance, the past practice of elite governance in China as well as the gains and losses of elite governance. The fourth part analyzes the characteristics of a benefit gambling time, conversion of the rural elite, the pattern of elites’ game in rural governance as well as the structure of interests’ game. The fifth section discusses the direction of adjusting pattern of interests’ game and the expansion path of rural elite democracy.